B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

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Please quote the Greek text you are discussing directly in your post if it is reasonably short - do not ask people to look it up. This is not a beginner's forum, competence in Greek is assumed.

So what are we to make of that? Is the English translation tradition right after all?

Ah yes. I had forgotten about those! There is technically a case for the transitive sense. It's still really rare...even in the papyri. I did a paper on ἵστημι six years ago that maybe I need to dig up. The intransitive usage remains the dominant usage through at least the 6th c. CE (which, at the time, was the latest century I had texts from).

But the grammars are telling us there is a difference in form, not just two different senses of the same perfect form. The transitive form is -εστακα and the commoner intransitive form -εστηκα. At least that's what these grammars are saying: Veitch, Buttmann, Winer-Schmiedel, Thackeray, Moulton-Howard. And Thackeray gives LXX examples that have a direct object: 1Kgdms 15.12, 1Macc 10.20, 11.34, and (with variants) Jer 1.10 6.17 16.5.
Or has someone more recently argued that the difference is merely a matter of variant spelling, and you can read the form as transitive or intransitive as you wish?

As regards Acts 8.11, most of the manuscripts and apparently all editions read ἐξεστακέναι. (Some read ἐξιστακέναι, and a few ἐξεστηκέναι.

But that question notwithstanding, I'm of the opinion that the English translation is tradition is right either way. Translations are under no obligation to retrain source language syntax in the target language.

Fine. I expressed myself unwisely. What I meant was "Is the transitive reading, which happens to be the syntax that the English translation tradition appears to follow, the right one?" (I'm not interested in defending a particular translation.) It may be of interest, though, that the Latin Vulgate dementasset eos [he had driven them crazy] is also transitive.

In any case, it seems that in this phenomenon lies the answer to Ruth's original question.

Thanks, everyone! This thread has been like a mystery novel with new twists in every post. On balance, it seems like ἐξεστακέναι here is indeed transitive.

The backstory is: I was in a reading group and we were looking at examples of the accusative + infinitive construction, of which there are a few in this passage. When we got to this verse, the group leader said that this is *not* an example of acc. + inf., and someone else asked how do we know? The leader said it's because the inf. is perf. act. so αὐτούς must be the object. I said that I thought the perfect of ἵστημι and its compounds was intransitive, but in any case I wouldn't be prepared to commit myself without checking the lexicons. I went home and checked my lexicons and was none the wiser, so I decided to post here. I'm relieved to find that my ἀπορία was justified!

But I was bothered by this quote from "Meyer". For a start, I wondered which Meyer was meant. The content looks late 19th century, but it can't be H.A.W. Meyer because he was dead and buried by the time Grimm-Thayer saw the light of day. Perhaps it's the American editor of H.A.W. Meyer, or a different Meyer altogether.

Yes, it is the American editor of Meyer. Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier, I was presenting at a conference and not paying much attention. I was using the version on Studylight.

Indeed, but LSJ itselfstill gives no indication of spelling differences signal differences in transitivity, as the same entry also says:

also ἕστηκα (v. infr.) in trans. sense

On the other hand, this is still really interesting, with a cursory search, since the shift is one directional. Perfects with the α don't appear to be ever intransitive...at least not unambiguously, but perfects with the η can occasionally be transitive.

On the other hand, this is still really interesting, with a cursory search, since the shift is one directional. Perfects with the α don't appear to be ever intransitive...at least not unambiguously, but perfects with the η can occasionally be transitive.

The idea is not implausible, I can say that. The 19th century grammarians did not have the advantage of the documentary papyri. I wonder if the claim holds up if those are taken into account?